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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/29884230">Dark Before Dawn</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Avia_Isadora/pseuds/Avia_Isadora'>Avia_Isadora</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Four Nights to Rome [3]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Borgias (Showtime TV)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Gen, War</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-03-06</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-03-06</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-15 16:34:26</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>705</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/29884230</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Avia_Isadora/pseuds/Avia_Isadora</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>The King of France marches on Rome with Giulia Farnese and Lucretia Borgia as his prisoners.  He has routed the Papal Army with his cannon.  Giulia knows Rome is next.</p>
<p>This goes in episode 1.8 The Art of War.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Four Nights to Rome [3]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/2181156</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Dark Before Dawn</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <em>“It is said that the darkest hour of the night comes just before the dawn.”</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>-Thomas Fuller</em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>               The third night Giulia does not sleep at all.  When she closes her eyes the events of the day return too strongly.  She feared for the Papal Army when they stood before French guns, but not nearly enough.  She was at a distance.  The screams that followed the first volley were far away.  She could see the tattered bodies on the grass, the thrashing horses, the limbless men bellowing for a moment.  She could not smell death.  The wind was at their backs, the better to carry the smoke away from the French King.</p>
<p>               And yet she knew.  Of course she has seen death.  She sat beside her mother dying.  She saw her youngest brother washed and laid out when he was two and she twelve.  But that was nothing like this.  That was sorrow, not horror.</p>
<p>               Tomorrow it will be Rome.  Tomorrow the women who have gossiped about her and with her will be dead, lying in pools of blood in their own sala.  Tomorrow the hucksters who try to sell fragments of the True Cross, the prostitutes who wait by the public fountains, the vegetable sellers and the urchins who roam the streets will be dead.  French guns will not distinguish between the mighty and the fallen.  She will sit her horse calmly while they batter down the gates as they did at Lucca.  She will sit beside Lucretia.  They will beg mercy.  It will not be granted.  She will beg.  She will go on her knees in the dust, not because it will avail anything but because she must live with herself after.  If she does not, she will not know for certain it was useless.  She will kiss King Charles’ boot.  Della Rovere will smile.  And it will change nothing.</p>
<p>               Lucretia sleeps.  She talked the king into a truce, saying that her brother wished to surrender.  It allowed Juan to escape.  It allowed what remained of the Papal Army to escape.  Giulia has no illusions they will stand before the city.  How should they?  If any of them have any sense, they are spending this night helping their families flee.</p>
<p>               She turns over on the narrow cot in the tent.  And that will spare some.  It was well done.  Perhaps tomorrow they will march into a ghost city, bereft of all save the poorest who cannot flee.  There will be houses aplenty to sack, but perhaps there will be few children to kill, few women to rape.  Perhaps Rome will stand empty, the gates open, a wind blowing through the Eternal City.  Twice in two thousand years it has been sacked.  This will be the third time.</p>
<p>               He will not run.  She knows Rodrigo.  She knows it in her bones.  They will cut him down before the altar in St. Peter’s, if they dare.  If not, they will haul him to some cell and do it there.  Perhaps one day, long after she is dead and all else is forgotten, they will canonize him for it.  That is small comfort.  And yet she could not counsel him to run.  She would not say so if she were there.  It would break him as death will not.</p>
<p>               As to what becomes of her, it will be marginalia, will it not be?  No one will quite know what happened to La Bella Farnese after Alexander Sextus’ death.  Just as well.  It does not belong in a story of a martyr.</p>
<p>               She can guess.  She will be of no more use to Charles of France.  She knows what happens to women who have no use. </p>
<p>               Lucretia sleeps.  She has no power to save her.  Perhaps she erred to bring her from Pesaro, but she would be no safer there when Giovanni Sforza learned of her pregnancy.  Perhaps she can win Charles’ favor.  The former Pope’s daughter would make a suitable mistress for the King of France.  Lucretia would play that card if she must.  Perhaps that’s her calculation.  She is thinking something, but there was no privacy to ask what.  And now she sleeps.  It is best to let her. </p>
<p>               Giulia lies awake until the dawn comes.</p>
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